Time for an Upgrade?

Creationist researchers strive to understand what the earth’s
rock record has to teach us about God’s judgment and mercy. While we never waver
on God’s Word, we must constantly reevaluate models and adopt new ones if they
make better sense of the evidence. British researcher Paul Garner made such
a radical shift when he learned what the catastrophic plate tectonics (CPT)
model can explain.

It’s encouraging to see the growing number of modern scientists engaged in
constructing the creation model of origins. For a long time, I’ve felt that
simply attacking evolutionary theories is insufficient. Instead, our main efforts
need to be channelled into showing how the biblical framework of history explains
the world around us better than any alternative.

Creationists want to reclaim the natural sciences for Christ, and that means
constructing new theories in biology, geology, and astronomy that are founded
on the Bible and consistent with the scientific data, and then fitting those
theories together in a coherent creation model. This is no easy task. It’s much
simpler to criticize evolution than to build positive alternatives that can
withstand rigorous examination.

Trained in the earth sciences, I have focused my interest in developing a creationist
theory of earth history. Since the advent of modern geology, John Whitcomb and
Henry Morris’s 1961 book, The Genesis Flood, was pretty much the first
attempt to create a creationist theory of the earth. But it was only a start.
Their ideas need to be updated, improved, built upon, and integrated with new
theories to produce a coherent creationist model of earth history.

The Bible gives information that can help in interpreting the clues we unearthed
in geological studies, but many questions remain. For example, which are the
Flood layers?

Which are the Flood Layers?

Much of the earth’s geological record consists of sedimentary rock layers laid
down by water, such as mudstones, limestones, and sandstones. In most cases,
these layers built up sequentially, one being laid on top of another in the
manner of a multi-layer sandwich. Provided that earth movements have not disturbed
the sequence, the oldest layer will be at the bottom of the pile.

Early in the rise of modern geology, the portion of the geological record that
includes animal fossils was divided into four main parts: the Primary (later
called Paleozoic), Secondary (later called Mesozoic), Tertiary, and Quaternary
(see below). Whitcomb and Morris suggested that all these layers were laid down
in Noah’s Flood.

However, in the 1980s, some creationists began to suggest that only the Primary
sediments were laid down during Noah’s Flood. They made this suggestion to explain
otherwise puzzling features of the rock layers, in particular the existence
of structures such as reefs, soils, and colonized seafloors that apparently
took longer than just the year of the Flood to build up (though not millions
of years).

This seemed to be an interesting avenue to explore, and in the mid 1990s I
contributed to a symposium in which I argued that the Flood/post-Flood boundary
must be placed somewhere near the top of the Primary layers. It’s fair to say
that this proposal proved controversial and generated a great deal of discussion
and debate!

Problems with My Favored Theory

Over the next few years, however, I began to find a number of problems with
the theory that I’d helped develop. It became evident that many of the features
that had led me to conclude that the Secondary layers were post-Flood were also
present in the Primary layers. I began to wonder whether the end of the Flood
should be pushed even further back in the geological record.

Problem #1

If this were true, however, creation geologists would have to account for even
more sedimentary layers laid down after the Flood. But my study of the biblical
genealogies had persuaded me that the time between Noah and Abraham was fairly
short—perhaps no more than 350 years. This didn’t seem long enough to accommodate
so much erosion and earth movement, unless the post-Flood period was almost
as catastrophic as the Flood itself.

Problem #2

Another problem I saw concerned the breakup of the earth’s continents. The
geological evidence that the continents had once been united into a single supercontinent
was very strong, but how and when did they break apart?

I soon realized that, if the Flood ended much lower in the geological record
as I had suggested, then much of the continents’ breakup must have taken place
after—not during—the Flood. But this raised a serious problem. The known physics
indicated that the earth’s plates could either move very fast (as during the
Flood) or hardly at all (like today). There didn’t seem to be any way for them
to move at moderate speeds, which is what the post-Flood theory required.

Problem #3

Another concern was that placing the end of the Flood so low in the geological
record completely “decoupled” the Ice Age from the Flood. Creationist modelling
in the 1990s had successfully shown how widespread ice sheets could have developed
after the Flood, as moisture from the warm oceans fell as heavy snow on the
cold continents. However, if the Flood were pushed further down in the geological
record, the Ice Age would have begun long after the Flood. This bothered me
because it left me without any explanation for the Ice Age.

Problem #4

One final factor was the realization that I had failed to take account of the
bigger picture. When dealing with very specific geological problems, it’s easy
to “miss the forest for the trees.” A broader context adds a fresh perspective.
This broader context is the thick and uniform sediments extending across continents
in the Primary and Secondary layers. In the Tertiary and Quaternary layers these
continent-scale patterns are largely absent, with most sediments restricted
to more local areas or basins. With this in mind, the most obvious place to
locate the end of the Flood was near the top of the Secondary layers, at the
point where continent-scale processes gave way to regional-scale processes.
My favored model was inconsistent with this big picture.

Putting the Pieces Together

After years of grappling with the combined weight of these considerations,
I felt I had to change my view. But whatever I did accept needed to put all
the pieces together.

For example, I wanted to explain the evidence that the continents were breaking
up at the same time that the Primary and Secondary sediments were being laid.
What mechanism could break up the continents so quickly? In 1994, a team of
creationist researchers had proposed just such a theory, called catastrophic
plate tectonics (CPT).

It turns out that the CPT theory is able to explain much more than the breakup
of continents. For instance, it explains everything that conventional plate
tectonics explains and more (see “The Missing Piece,” p. 61).

THE MISSING PIECE—A Creationist Perspective

Continents plowing through the ocean floor? How geologists came to accept this
radical idea is one of the most interesting stories in modern science. But
the evidence became overwhelming with the development of new instruments to
study the ocean floor.

Recent discoveries have left geologists with new puzzles. For example, deep
in the earth’s mantle are pieces of cold plates that apparently came from
the earth’s surface. How could these cold plates sink slowly through the hot
mantle (up to 7232°F), over millions of years, without “melting”? In their
search for answers, conventional geologists are hindered by a belief that
the earth’s plates have been moving at current, slow rates (1–2 inches per
year) for millions of years.

Creationists, on the other hand, know from the data of Scripture that the
earth has only been around a few thousand years. Using the Bible’s history
as their starting point, these scientists were ready to take the theory of
continental movement to the next level. They worked out a theory, called catastrophic
plate tectonics. CPT included the best parts of the earlier theories but added
speed. Recent studies of granite have shown that silicate rock, under stress,
can weaken by a factor of a billion or more. This means that, under the right
conditions, the continental plates could move a billion times faster than
today. The Flood provided the necessary conditions.

CPT explains many problems that are a puzzle in conventional plate tectonics.
For example, how did plates ever have enough energy to drive their way down
through the mantle layers, which currently prevent plates from moving any
lower? Also, how could cold crust material sink to the earth’s core without
melting? The answer is to speed things up in a catastrophic, global Flood!

CPT also seems to be consistent with the biblical details about the Flood,
such as the breakup of the “fountains of the great deep,” the forty days and
nights of rain, and the flooding of the continents. The emission of vast quantities
of molten rock onto the bottom of the ocean raised the seafloor, raising the
water level and flooding the continents. Also, this magma heated the ocean water,
which later generated the heavy snowfall of the Ice Age after the Flood (see
“A Dark and Stormy World,” p. 78).

Of course, that isn’t to say that CPT has all the answers or has solved every
problem. Outstanding questions remain, such as how to explain the removal of
the heat that would have been generated by the rapid breakup of the continents.
However, I’ve come to think that the issues facing CPT are not insoluble and,
in fact, they suggest some interesting avenues for further research. To me,
the CPT model has the greatest potential to bring together information from
a variety of scientific fields, including geology, geophysics, paleontology,
and climatology, in a full-fledged model of the global Flood.

Holding Our Models Loosely

One of the important lessons I’ve learned from this process is the need for
Christians to exercise humility in our search for the truth. We don’t have all
the answers, and our scientific hypotheses may be wrong. So we ought to be ready
to concede our models as the evidence demands.

We must continually seek a better understanding of the Bible and the scientific
data, even if it means revising or rejecting our cherished ideas. Scientific
theories—even creationist ones—are tentative, and we should learn to hold onto
them loosely. Of course, the other side of this is that it’s always important
to glean as many truths from a successful model as possible. Scientists don’t
abandon theories just because they haven’t explained all the data. All theories
are incomplete, but we should seek to embrace the best and see how far we can
get with them.

Is catastrophic plate tectonics the “final word” in creationist geology? Will
it withstand further scientific and scriptural scrutiny? Only time will tell.
If experience has taught me anything, it’s that our scientific models will look
very different in, say, ten years’ time. Some will have been confirmed, others
will have fallen by the wayside, and new ones will have been developed. But
that’s not something that should unduly concern us. In fact, it’s one of the
things that makes science so exciting.

Risk-free trial issue!

First name:

Last name:

Email:

Address:

Address2:

City:

State:

Zip:

Leave unfilled:

If you decide you want to keep Answers coming, simply pay your invoice for just $24 and receive four issues (a full year) more. If not, write “cancel” across the invoice and return it. The trial issue is yours to keep, regardless!

Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.
New subscribers only. No gift subscriptions.Offer valid in U.S. only.

Newsletter

Thank You!

Thank you for signing up to receive email newsletters from Answers in Genesis.

Whoops!

Your newsletter signup did not work out. Please refresh the page and try again.

Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.